


Ring on Ring

by gayshitiguess



Series: the winds, that are footless, / waist-deep in history [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Molly’s death, be warned, but this is more of just like a rambling poem about the shit that’s growing over Molly’s grave, i love this, this is in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 12:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19426318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayshitiguess/pseuds/gayshitiguess
Summary: Two yards off of the south side of the Glory Run Road, growing wild, ignoring the changing of the seasons, there was a great, ancient weeping willow tree.





	Ring on Ring

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Sylvia Plath poem “Winter Trees.” Idea credits to my wonder discord group, where we all got weepy about a Molly Tree. This one’s for you, Becca.

Two yards off of the south side of the Glory Run Road, growing wild, ignoring the changing of the seasons, there was a great, ancient weeping willow tree. It’s leaves strange, bright, it’s branches twisting, it stood resolute through war and winter. Alone and free, vulnerable and loud, the tree stood as the only one of its kind. It had been many things before, but never this, and it quite liked being this.

The Glory Run Road was a brutal traveling route, and so those that had run the road before often hid supplies for those that followed. The weeping willow stood alone in a great stretch of planes before mountains, and so, as the tree grew, it began to shelter these supplies and those that collected them. 

It was a strange tree, not the dark evergreen that most were in that half of the continent. It’s bark had only the faintest suggestion of pink, it’s leaves a vibrant purple that shone in the light, created the illusion of a dancing flame. An unusual sight, especially in its bleak surroundings. Stories began to spread beneath its branches, under its protection.

It did strange things in the moonlight, they said. Danced, sang, burned like a beacon for those needing rest. The Moonweaver had kissed it, they said. Bent down from the heavens and planted Her lips to the earth, they said. Melora had kissed back, a beautiful embrace, fleeting as the sun rose. But a seed doesn’t grow without water. And so a paladin of Sehanine had come, bearing the mark of the moon on his skin. He had screamed on the land, danced, fought, made love twisted in the earth, and he had split his blood to make the seed grow. He gave his body so it’s roots had something to eat into. And from his bleeding body, the tree had grown, and in it eternity. 

People didn’t get the details right. The tree didn’t mind. 

It stood for three years after it’s planting when its first companions past it again. It was a familiar place. They had tasted the blood in the ground, and they sat with their backs on the tree’s young trunk. Barely a child, that tree, it’s life split in thirds, but it looked older than it was. Ten years, maybe. Maybe more. A child of the Wildmother blessed the ground. Melora and Sehanine embraced once more. They knew the paladin’s name and they were the last to speak it, to remind the tree. 

Another five passed and someone came to cut it down. They were foolish, unperceptive. They couldn’t tell a temple when they saw one. They brought their ax down on a vessel of the Moonweaver and She wept. And Kord, the Stormlord heard Her. The chord of His champion and the chord of Hers had been so twisted they were one, and so He struck the wood cutter down. Their body fed the tree, and the gash in it’s trunk scarred, but was forgotten with time. Every scar the it had ever had was forgotten with enough of it. 

The tree stood for hundreds of years, and the child of the Wildmother came to it each time one of the paladin’s companions was buried in his graveyard. And one day he did not come, but there were more to tell the tree. The child’s children, their children, their children’s children. And another chord was twisted into the braid. 

Two yards off of the south side of the Glory Run Road there is a weeping willow tree. Resolute and strange, aflame and scared, the tree stands as a safe haven for any who seek it. Lovers carve their names into its trunk. Quiet souls press it’s strange leaves into their books, It’s branches protect Kord’s great warriors, Melora’s wild saplings, the lovers who scream the name Sehanine. It is the most quiet that it’s soul has ever been, as peaceful. But those that care to talk are always replied to. 

A smooth voice, deep, handsome. Twinged strangely with a manor removed from geography, always smirking, just the sound of it. Mean, dangerous, sharp, and sweet. 

“Hi,” the voice will say. “I’m Mollymauk Tealeaf. Molly, to my friends.” And everyone calls the tree Molly. 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me on Tumblr at gayshitiguess.


End file.
